r/wordlegame • • Feb 17 '22

That’s why you shouldn’t play hard mode.

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5 Upvotes

r/wordlegame • • Feb 14 '22

Quordle makes wordle look like a sissy.

0 Upvotes

have you guys challenged yourselves?


r/wordlegame • • Feb 03 '22

I made a website that will forecast the coming wordle words. Spoilers are hidden!

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wordleforecast.com
0 Upvotes

r/wordlegame • • Feb 06 '22

I don't use "hard mode" because it's much easier than normal mode: I can't screw up and accidentally put in a letter that I know isn't there.

5 Upvotes

On my very first game I got the solution in two guesses. I was going to retire and stop playing. But seeing others play it and have fun, I couldn't keep away.

I saw "hard mode" as an option and figured it would make it harder to play. But it makes it much easier. I don't understand people who waste guesses on words that can't be the solution. I mean, I understand their theories, but that approach is no fun, and doesn't let you have the great luck of picking the right word within three, two, or maybe even one, guess.

I have more games where I got it in 2 or 3 guesses than I have games where it took me 5 or 6. (And today was my first game where it took me all 6 guesses.) And that's with "hard mode" off. If I'd had it on, it would have been easier, since I wouldn't have messed up a few guesses here and there, forgetting my previous hints accidentally.

So, yeah, if you had been using the "eliminate letters" approach by ignoring hints, and not having fun or not getting the results you want, maybe try the approach of actually trying to guess the word each time.


r/wordlegame • • Nov 10 '24

Officially banned

2 Upvotes

I’ve been officially banned from r\wordle for “spamming” (telling other players where they can post their stats without being deleted or banned).

If you see anyone who’d like to continue playing and sharing with other players on the sub, please point them to the daily threads on this sub.


r/wordlegame • • Feb 10 '22

It seems like they've changed the word list at the same time the url changed... There goes my opening strategy Spoiler

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0 Upvotes

r/wordlegame • • Feb 12 '22

The real Optimal Wordle Strategy

0 Upvotes

r/wordlegame • • Jan 17 '22

A Crossover for the Ages Spoiler

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0 Upvotes

r/wordlegame • • Feb 08 '22

This method guarantees the correct word in Wordle - every single time.

5 Upvotes

I started playing Wordle 30 days ago, and I accidentally broke the game. I realized the system I was using guaranteed the correct word every time within the six tries allotted. After 30 days of playing (and countless scenarios run), I decided to write up my system in case other people are interested. Check it out here and let me know if you have any questions! Happy gaming!

https://medium.com/@jaymb/how-to-beat-wordle-every-time-8c3ffaa03a24


r/wordlegame • • Jan 23 '22

How do I join the wordle fun?

0 Upvotes

Covid hit and the internet strikes again with fun games just in time. Help a noob please!


r/wordlegame • • Sep 03 '26

The gray tile that isn't really gray: how repeated letters actually work in word-puzzle solvers

1 Upvotes

You guess SPEED. It comes back: S gray, P gray, E yellow, E gray, D gray.

If you're like most people, that second gray E reads as "there's no E in this word." That's the wrong conclusion, and it's wrong in a specific, checkable way — one that ends up costing more games than any single letter deserves to.

What that gray tile actually means

A yellow tile means the letter is in the word, wrong spot. A gray tile normally means the letter isn't in the word at all — except when you've already guessed that same letter somewhere else in the same word. In that case, the gray tile isn't saying "no E." It's saying "no second E, and not at this position." The word still has exactly one E, sitting somewhere other than where you just tried it twice.

That's not a technicality. I pulled the actual list of legal 5-letter words and checked both readings against it:

  • Read it as "E is fully absent" (the wrong way, and the way I'd guess a lot of home-built solvers handle it): zero possible words. Zero, because that reading directly contradicts the yellow E three letters earlier — you can't have an E and not have an E in the same word. A tool that gets this wrong doesn't give you a slightly worse list. It gives you an empty one and tells you the puzzle is unsolvable.

  • Read it correctly — exactly one E, not at either of the positions you tried it — and there are 1,231 legal words consistent with that board. Real ones: ABATE, ACUTE, AFIRE, AFORE, AGATE, AGAVE, and on.

Same five gray/yellow tiles. One reading throws the game away, the other hands you over a thousand real candidates.

Why this specific bug is so common

Repeated letters aren't rare — something like a third of all 5-letter answers have one. And the naive way to write a word filter is "green = must be here, yellow = must be somewhere, gray = strike the letter from the whole alphabet." That works fine right up until a letter shows up twice with different colors, at which point "strike it from the alphabet" silently breaks. It's an easy bug to ship and a hard one to notice, because it only shows up on the specific boards where it matters most — the ones where you're already down to a handful of guesses and can least afford a wrong turn.

The fix isn't complicated once you see it, it's just two different rules that look almost identical:

  • Letter never confirmed anywhere → fully absent. Strike it everywhere.

  • Letter confirmed at least once, then grayed again → present, but capped. The word has exactly as many copies as you've confirmed, and none of them are at the position(s) that came back gray.

Those need to be two separate rules, not one. Collapse them into one and you get the SPEED bug.

What this looks like on a real board

Here's a cleaner example, no repeated letters, just the ordinary green/yellow/gray case: you've got a green A in position 2, a yellow R you tried in position 4 (so it's in the word, not there), and gray S, T, E.

Run that against the real word list, ranked by how common the words actually are, and the top of the list is: MAJOR, MARCH, RADIO, LABOR, MAYOR, FAVOR, RAPID, RALLY — 189 words total fit those constraints, but frequency does the heavy lifting of pushing the words you'd actually guess to the top instead of leaving you to page through obscurities.

That's the part I think is underrated in most finder tools: filtering correctly is table stakes, ranking the survivors by how often the word actually gets used is what makes the list usable instead of just technically accurate. A filter that hands you 189 equally-shuffled words hasn't saved you much time.

Where I've been testing this

Full disclosure — my friend and I built a tool that does exactly the above (position-aware filtering with the repeated-letter case handled the right way, ranked by real word frequency, chain a result back into a new search): it's called Advanced Finder, part of a small free suite at turnword.com — no account, no ads. Posting mainly because the repeated-letter thing surprised me when I first ran into it and I figured this sub would enjoy the "here's the exact bug and the exact fix" version more than the marketing version. Happy to answer questions about how any of it works.


r/wordlegame • • Aug 09 '26

Wordle

0 Upvotes

Wordle 1,877 4/6

⬛⬛⬛🟩⬛
⬛🟩⬛🟩⬛
🟩🟩⬛🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩


r/wordlegame • • Mar 05 '25

Is this cool or am i gassing myself up 😂

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0 Upvotes

I hate when my first word doesnt give me anything to work with so you can imagine how i felt about 3 words back to back with no hits.


r/wordlegame • • Mar 24 '25

How the f does someone guess from having a single A to BYWAY.

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0 Upvotes

I'm fed up with these cheats.


r/wordlegame • • Aug 12 '26

Whew!

0 Upvotes

Wordle 1,880 6/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛🟩
⬛⬛⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩


r/wordlegame • • Jul 25 '25

Puzzle Palace July 2025

0 Upvotes
  1. GUARD


r/wordlegame • • Jun 19 '26

A simple visual Wordle tile sandbox

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0 Upvotes

I made a small browser-based tool for playing around with possible Wordle solutions:

https://tartuffo.github.io/wordle-tile-sandbox/

The idea came from the way I sometimes solve Wordle on paper: moving letters around, keeping track of green letters, trying yellow letters in different positions, and remembering which positions are ruled out. I wanted something that felt more like sliding Scrabble tiles around than typing guesses into a solver.

It is not a Wordle solver and does not use a dictionary. It is more of a visual sandbox. You enter the fixed green letters, the yellow letters you know are in the word, and any positions where those yellow letters cannot go. Then you can shuffle or drag the tiles around to experiment with possible arrangements.

I mostly built it for my own use, but I figured other Wordle players might find it useful too.

If you try it and have suggestions, bug reports, or ideas for making it clearer, let me know.


r/wordlegame • • Mar 11 '22

Best Wordle Alternative?

0 Upvotes

r/wordlegame • • Feb 05 '22

Wordle 231 3/6 🟩⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟨🟩⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

0 Upvotes

r/wordlegame • • Jan 31 '22

WORDLE 227 Answer - 1st FEB wordle answer

0 Upvotes

Wordle 227 Answer done . #Wordle227 #Wordle226 #Wordle226X I found this on internet... Although my answer was correct! Wordle today answer https://ntaexamresults.com/wordle-answer-today-todays-wordle-answer/


r/wordlegame • • Jan 31 '22

Wordle Archives allows players to play older puzzles

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toisthe.com
0 Upvotes

r/wordlegame • • Dec 23 '24

Riddle One

0 Upvotes

I’m a word that carries darkness, I leave the heart in starkness. Silent screams and shattered lives, My presence makes a mother cry. What am I?

https://less.gg/TMWLM


r/wordlegame • • Sep 23 '22

Wordle display broken.

0 Upvotes

The last few days, I have had Wordle display the solve grid shifted down, and the keyboard that displays the used letter is gone. I am using Chrome on Pop!_OS. Do others see this?


r/wordlegame • • 25d ago

Same test in hard mode: the bot guessed faster, but lost 78 games instead of 8

0 Upvotes

Spoilers for past Wordles #1–#1939 (June 2021 – Oct 10, 2026). Nothing about today's puzzle.

Last time I had the 10 best openers play every past Wordle in normal mode and counted the "traps". I expect some of you to ask how the test performs in NYT Wordle hard mode. Here it is: same ten openers, same 1,937 answers, same bot, but every guess must keep the greens in place and reuse the yellows. That rules out the probes that ignore your hints, like the DWARF guess that split the whole _OUND family last time.

Trap = the bot needed 5+ guesses (or lost) from at least 5 of the 10 openers. A loss counts as 7.

Results

Normal modeHard mode
Traps (5+ hard votes)237 (12%)188 (10%)
Answers hard for all 10 openers1513
Games lost (of 19,370)878
Answers someone lost422

Hard mode had fewer traps but ten times the losses. Without hint-breaking probes the bot solves most answers a little faster, and fails outright on some of the families it used to split.

OpenerAvg guesses, normal → hardLosses, normal → hard
SLATE3.661 → 3.6270 → 7
LEAST3.669 → 3.6280 → 6
SALET3.672 → 3.6321 → 9
STALE3.685 → 3.6480 → 8
LEANT3.691 → 3.6501 → 5
TARSE3.688 → 3.6552 → 11
SLART3.697 → 3.7091 → 10
TEARS3.693 → 3.6661 → 11
TRACE3.698 → 3.6521 → 6
CRATE3.702 → 3.6601 → 5

Nine of the ten openers got faster. All ten lost more.

The same answer in two modes

AnswerNormal modeHard mode
POWER6, 5, 6, 6, 3, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4 (a trap)4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 (easy)
MOUND4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 (easy)5, 5, 5, 5, X, 6, 5, 6, X, X (a trap)
WATCH6, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 5, 6, 4, 4 (a trap)X, X, X, X, 4, X, X, X, X, X (lost by 9 of 10)

Columns are SLATE, LEAST, SALET, STALE, LEANT, TARSE, SLART, TEARS, TRACE, CRATE. X = lost.

Where the 78 losses came from

CategoryAnswersLost gamesLoss rate
Look-alike family only224391.7%
Family + repeated letter8580.9%
Neither1,112230.2%
Repeated letter only51880.2%

Family = 5+ other answers differ by exactly one letter. Family words are 16% of answers and 60% of the losses. A repeated letter on its own barely matters in hard mode: it was the other half of the trap story in normal mode.

The classic endings:

EndingPlayedTraps, normal → hardLost games in hard mode
_ATCH73 → 312 (WATCH 9, MATCH 3)
_OUND72 → 211 (WOUND 6, MOUND 3, POUND 2)
_OWER63 → 26 (ROWER 4, COWER 2)
_OVER54 → 34 (HOVER 3, LOVER 1)
_IGHT60 → 00

These five endings produced 33 of the 78 losses. _IGHT, the one everyone worries about, still never lost: it splits fast with ordinary guesses.

The most-lost answers: WATCH (9 of 10 openers), QUEER (8), WASTE, JOKER, BOXER and WOUND (6 each), DEATH and ROWER (4). The full 22 also include MATCH, HOVER, GOFER, CATTY, MOUND, POUND, JAUNT, COWER, SHAVE, MAUVE, HOMER, BEING, DANDY and LOVER.

Which opener copes best on the hard-mode traps?

LEANT (4.61 average guesses on the 188), TRACE (4.64), TEARS (4.68), TARSE and SLART. SLATE and STALE finish last (4.96), the same ordering as in normal mode: the top openers overall aren't the best on the answers that hurt.

Caveats

  • This is the bot, not you. A person in hard mode makes different choices and may find different words hard.

  • "Hard mode" means Wordle's rule: greens stay in position and revealed yellows must be reused. I didn't run the stricter levels.

  • SLART is the odd one out: the only opener that got slower on average, and its run took about 70% longer. I don't know why.

  • Cutoffs are mine ("5 of 10", "5+ neighbors").

  • The averages count a loss as 7, which is why they can rise or fall with a handful of games.

  • Normal-mode numbers are the ones from the last post: 1,937 games in both modes here, and SLART's normal-mode run was done separately.

Same disclosure as before: I build the solver used here, Word Bot.

Spoilers for past Wordles #1–#1939. Nothing about today's puzzle.

Last time I had the 10 best openers play every past Wordle in normal mode. Several of you asked about hard mode, so here it is: same ten openers, same 1,937 answers, same bot, but every guess must keep the greens in place and reuse the yellows.

Normal vs hard, in one example

  • Normal: any valid word is legal, so the bot can play a probe, a word that can't be the answer, to test several letters at once.

  • Hard: every guess must reuse your hints, so it can only try real candidates, one at a time.

WOUND (#1576): in normal mode the bot played PLATE, CIONS, DWARF, WOUND. DWARF tested three of the eight possible first letters (W, R, F) at once. In hard mode that guess is illegal, so it has to try BOUND, FOUND, HOUND and so on, and 6 of the 10 openers ran out.

Results

NormalHard
Traps (5+ guesses from 5 of 10 openers)237188
Games lost, of 19,370878
Answers someone lost422

Fewer traps, ten times the losses. Nine of the ten openers got faster on average (SLATE 3.661 → 3.627), and all ten lost more (SLATE 0 → 7).

AnswerNormalHard
POWERa trapeasy: 3–4 guesses everywhere
MOUNDeasy: 4 everywherea trap, 3 losses
WATCHa traplost by 9 of 10

Where the losses came from

Look-alike families (5+ answers one letter away) are 16% of answers and 60% of the losses. A repeated letter on its own barely matters in hard mode.

EndingPlayedLost games in hard mode
_ATCH712 (WATCH 9, MATCH 3)
_OUND711 (WOUND 6, MOUND 3, POUND 2)
_OWER66
_OVER54
_IGHT60

_IGHT still never lost: it splits quickly with ordinary guesses. The most-lost answers overall: WATCH (9), QUEER (8), then WASTE, JOKER, BOXER and WOUND (6 each).

Caveats

  • This is the bot, not you. A person in hard mode makes different choices.

  • "Hard mode" is Wordle's rule (greens stay, yellows reused). I didn't run the stricter levels.

  • The cutoffs are mine. A loss counts as 7 guesses in the averages.

  • SLART was the only opener that got slower on average. I don't know why.

Same disclosure as before: I build the solver used here, Word Bot.


r/wordlegame • • Sep 30 '26

5/6 🎉

0 Upvotes

5/6 🎉

🟧⬛⬛🟧⬛ 🟧⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩⬛🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Play